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Triadic Memories is a vast single-movement work lasting approximately two hours. Like other works of the composer's final years, it's closely related to the aesthetics of Mark Rothko's paintings, and is characterised by stasis and extremely quiet dynamics. The unusual title refers partly to Feldman's attempt to evoke memory itself: listening to this piece is like flicking through an old photograph album. Its delicate, slowly-shifting harmonies reach toward an experience lost in time. It was perhaps this fragility that led the composer to describe the piece as 'the largest butterfly in captivity'.

Triadic Memories has only been performed a handful of times across the world, and the programme also features Karlheinz Stockhausen's evergreen Klavierstück IX.

Brahms composed his Tragic Overture while on holiday in 1880, writing that 'I could not refuse my melancholy nature the satisfaction of composing an overture for a tragedy'. Whether or not Brahms had a particular tragedy in mind remains a mystery, but the Overture encompasses imposing, turbulent ideas, poignant lyricism and memorable rhythms. Chopin’s Piano Concerto No.2 boasts one of his best-loved movements, the irresistibly romantic Larghetto, framed by an animated, intricate opening movement and a lively finale in the style of Polish folk-music. Beethoven’s expansive ‘Pastoral’ Symphony is a magnificent mixture of charm and innovation, brimming with evocative melodies which create a vivid impression of the countryside in all its majesty.

“…Dr. Archer’s approach is always first at the service of the music.” – Diapason Mag

Gail Archer is an international concert organist, recording artist, choral conductor and lecturer who specializing in drawing attention to composer anniversaries with her annual recital series in New York City: Liszt, Bach, Mendelssohn and Messiaen. Archer was the first American woman to play the complete works of Olivier Messiaen for the centennial of the composer’s birth in 2008. Her recordings include Franz Liszt: A Hungarian Rhapsody, Bach, the Transcendent Genius, An American Idyll, A Mystic In the Making on Meyer-Media LLC and The Orpheus of Amsterdam: Sweelinck and his Pupils on CALA Records, London. Archer is college organist at Vassar College, and director of the music program at Barnard College, Columbia University where she conducts the Barnard-Columbia Chorus. She serves as director of the artist and young organ artist recitals at NYC’s historic Central Synagogue. www.gailarcher.com

JS Bach’s work is so powerful – and has been so influential - perhaps because of his ability to write music that provokes a profound emotional response at the same time as being highly intellectually satisfying.

While Steve Reich’s series of solo instrument counterpoints are no direct homage to Bach, they are a contemporary expression of some of those compositional techniques that Bach so brilliantly mastered and used to powerful effect, as shown in his solo instrumental sonatas which are performed alongside. Reich’s soloist performs pulsed and fragmented musical phrases that are echoed, interlocked and sustained by a pre-recorded tape line. The listener is left picking out new melodic patterns that emerge from the resulting mutil-layered, hugely satisfying canonic textures.

Openly inspired by Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, Igor Stravinsky’s own reinvention of the baroque concerto was written for performance in the magnificent music room of Dumbarton Oaks, a house outside Washington DC. The music’s figurations, sonorities and counterpoints all echo Bach, but without any plagiarism. Stravinsky’s arrangement of four preludes and fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier (the last thing the composer worked on) is another kind of homage – a re-orchestration of Bach’s music using the colour palette of modern instruments

Preview 6.30pm: John Storgårds and Håkan Hardenberger discuss this unique concert in which each will conduct and perform as soloists.

The BBC Philharmonic launch their celebration of the big three ballets of Stravinsky with Petrushka, the Russian composer’s colourful tale of love and death at a fairground. Closer to home, prepare to be amazed as Håkan Hardenberger, probably the world’s greatest trumpeter, joins conductor John Storgårds in a showpiece written specially for him, then swaps places to conduct while Storgårds plays a concerto written to display his own incredible violin playing. Hearing is believing.

Takemitsu was a pivotal figure in opening up an authentic creative dialogue between Western and Japanese music. When he retreated to his mountain villa to write November Steps, significantly, he took Debussy’s Jeux with him. The result was a haunting, twilit masterpiece which employs the shakahuchii and biwa, to be performed here beside works of Takemitsu’s contemporaries (Akira Miyoshi, Toshio Hosokawa) and of the next generation, including Dai Fujikura, who trained almost entirely in the UK and only discovered his native traditional instruments in Europe. His high-octane orchestral writing is both streetwise, humorous and sophisticated, while French-based Misato Mochizuki has devised her Musubi (Knot) from a traditional celebratory dance, but has also utilised techno dance music and gagaku in her work . Film has been an important medium for these composers, and Takemitsu’s film scores are explored in our first event. Don’t miss, too, the rare opportunity to hear a unique Fusion Project, in which traditional Japanese instrumentalists play alongside members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

The BBC Singers conjure up a series of musical seascapes at St Paul's Knightsbridge. Maritime subjects - real and imaginary, triumphant and tragic - have always been a source of fascination for poets and composers, and in this concert the BBC Singers present a programme of sea-themed works from Coleridge-Taylor, Bantock, Richard Rodney Bennett and two Renaissance masters. The tragic Canticum Calamitatis Maritimae by Finnish composer Mantyjarvi was composed after the sinking of the MS Estonia and the loss of over 800 lives at sea in 1994, while Steve Martland's new Sea Songs (here receiving its English premiere) references a range of sea songs and texts.

The first of three concerts celebrating one of the most admired composers of a generation: Mark Anthony Turnage. 'From the Wreckage' (‘outstanding: the music begins hellishly but gradually picks up a bluesy swing… I was mesmerised.’ The Times) was premiered in 2005; original soloist Håkan Hardenberger returns to reprise the role. Tapiola brings Finnish forest God Tapio to shimmering life while Beethoven’s 'Eroica' dwells in the human realm of roaring victories and crushing defeats.

Mark Anthony Turnage’s Speranza (‘Hope’) is a monument to the power of optimism in a bleak world – ‘I started working on the piece while thinking about the absence of hope. I wanted to lift people up.’ Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto offers the composer’s trademark thundering drama juxtaposed with sweet grace. While Tapiola spoke of forest Gods, the rippling Oceanides breathes life into the female water spirits of Greek mythology.

Written in just three days, Shostakovich’s Festive Overture is a dazzling tour de force, demanding breathtaking agility from the whole orchestra. Also written in haste, the Karelia Suite by Sibelius is one of his most popular works, its shimmering textures and bold melodies celebrating the composer’s native Finland. Prokofiev’s dynamic and colourful First Piano Concerto was written when he was a student; Prokofiev premiered the Concerto himself, considering it to be his first mature work. This programme culminates in the grandeur of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition orchestrated by Ravel, each movement vividly conjuring up a different scene.

Free Spirits is the first of our themed seasons. It brings together two of the greatest operas of the 20th century, Janáček’s The Cunning little Vixen and Berg’s Lulu. Both pieces pose profound questions about how much freedom we desire and how much we can tolerate and still remain a functioning society.
She is a vision of freedom too pure to be allowed to last.
Everyone is drawn to Lulu, intoxicated by her; those in her thrall are like moths to a flame. Her flame burns bright and fast but sooner or later it will be extinguished by the very things it once fed upon.
Berg’s second and final opera is a masterpiece – total theatre. Anyone wishing to see the greatest works in the repertoire must include Lulu in their list. Few composers invite their audiences unflinchingly to confront humanity’s darkest regions in the way that Berg does here. Lulu promises a shattering but rewarding experience for those who encounter it.

Welsh National Opera has an important association with this great composer’s work: WNO gave the first British performances of Lulu in the 1970s and won acclaim and awards for our 2005 production of Wozzeck. David Pountney is one of the world’s most influential opera directors. This production of Lulu is his first new production in his role as our Chief Executive and Artistic Director.

Supported by the WNO Partnership, the WNO Lulu Circle and The John S Cohen Foundation. Spring 2013 Season supported by a lead gift from the Colwinston Charitable Trust.

Whether at work as composer, solo pianist or chamber musician, Huw Watkins is blessed with the unfailing ability to communicate and draw audiences close to the edge of their seats. His chamber compositions, many of them premièred at Wigmore Hall in recent years, have earned critical acclaim and entered the repertoire.

More information on the four concerts available here: http://www.wigmore-hall.org.uk/whats-on/series/huwwatkinsday